Kristi Leigh, evening news co-anchor at WTOL-TV, Channel 11, and WUPW-TV, Channel 36, is leaving her “childhood dream” job after three years to join Fox affiliate KMPH-TV in Fresno, Calif.
Leigh's last day on the local airwaves — at least for now — is Friday. Her start date at the Sinclair Broadcast Group-owned KMPH is March 16.
“This is a decision not taken lightly,” she said, one that began months before her three-year contract with WTOL was up. “Something started stirring inside me that maybe I should make a change. I thought about it for a long time. It took me months to finally make the decision.
“I'm not breaking my contract” with WTOL, she added. “I would have never done that. I’m very loyal to them. Getting to work at WTOL as the main anchor was the realization of a childhood dream. That's why it was such a hard decision.”
Leigh joined WTOL and WUPW in January, 2017, to co-anchor the stations’ six evening newscasts with longtime Toledo broadcast journalist Jerry Anderson, who retired in June, 2018.
Before Channel 11, she worked as an anchor-reporter at Sinclair-owned WNWO-TV, Channel 24. Leigh jumped affiliates only months before Channel 24 outsourced much of its newscast, including all of its anchors, to a satellite hub at a CBS affiliate in South Bend, Ind.
A 2007 graduate of Bowling Green State University who majored in broadcast journalism and minored in finance, Leigh, 37, was born in Toledo, has never left the Toledo market, and has worked at every local station with the exception of WGTE-TV, Channel 30, Toledo’s PBS affiliate.
That her career hasn’t gone far in terms of distance was a significant reason for her to move nearly 2,400 miles to the west to anchor KMPH’s two weekday evening newscasts, 7 and 10.
“I feel like I’m ready to experience another part of the country,” Leigh said. “I’ve traveled all over the world” as a child on mission trips with her family. “And yet I live in my hometown, got my degree in my hometown, and never had to live outside of my hometown.”
Moving to California and a bigger media market — at No. 55 Fresno is 25 slots higher than Toledo at No. 80 — also presents new professional challenges and experiences for Leigh as a broadcast journalist.
Personally, the challenge is that the single mother to a 12-year-old daughter, and 8- and 9-year-old sons is moving to a city in which she has no family or friends.
As a Christian, Leigh said, she has faith that Fresno is where she is supposed to be.
“I just believe that God has already prepared the way and already set it up for me,” she said. “My first goals were finding a home and finding a church home, which I've done. I’ve made some connections that will help me there.”
It was while on-air during a March 8 newscast that Leigh learned her 41-year-old brother, Matthew Foreman, and his 13-year-old daughter had been in a late-evening traffic accident when Foreman’s vehicle rear-ended a tractor-trailer that had slowed because of traffic.
“They had to push me out the door to go the hospital,” she said.
Her brother died that night, and her niece suffered serious but not life-threatening injuries. The outpouring of concern, good thoughts, and well-wishes to Leigh from viewers was “overwhelming,” she said, which is why leaving them “is so bittersweet.”
“This community is amazing for that,” she said, “and I will forever be indebted to them.”
WTOL management did not respond to calls about a replacement for Leigh going forward.
First Published February 10, 2020, 8:51 p.m.
